


The Geomancers

by pudgy puk (deumion)



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Backstory, Duskwights, Gen, Kid Fic, Theorycrafting, ishgard, repost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:55:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25921693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deumion/pseuds/pudgy%20puk
Summary: Some strangers cut through town on their way... somewhere.(written during ARR)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11





	The Geomancers

**Author's Note:**

> i decided to repost this old bit i wrote about drividot, my main, and my hopes for duskwights and geomancers. his family lives in on the fringes of coerthas in a community mostly of duskwight diaspora.

The newness of his eighth nameday toy, a green crocodile of wood, sawdust, cloth and leather, hadn’t worn off when the strangers came--and so that was what they found him doing, playing knight where he could be alone for a while (not  _ forever _ . Not even an hour. But long enough to forget the disagreement between him and Matheonien the miller’s boy on the subject of who was more qualified to play-act a dragoon). Too quiet even for him to hear, there came at least a dozen other duskwights from the shadows, wearing clothes unlike normal people, hair cut strangely, and skin the color of soot, rather than ash.

“You, boy. Get yer mother and father,” one of them had said, nudging him in the rear with a walking stick--Drividot jumped with a yelp, discarding the stick in favor of holding the crocodile near to him and fairly running back into the village. He was indeed going to get his parents, if not precisely for the same reason the strangers wanted--so their laughter followed him back through the streets.

***

The matter required more than his parents, as it turned out--half the village seemed to need to opine on the subject of the strangers, their pilgrimage (“Do you think the Holy City will really let them in?” No one answered him), and their request to use some of their tunnels (“Couldn’t they just take the roads? There’re lots of roads to Ishgard.” For some reason, his suggestions went unheard). And even though everyone else under five fulms tall quickly got bored with all the adults talking and returned to Ser Matheonien and the Dragon, Act II (possibly Ser Matheonien  _ the _ Dragon, Act II; not all of the performers seemed to be working from the same script), Drividot stuck around, milling about underfoot as the men of his village spoke with the elezen who seemed to be the strangers’ leader and his close companions. Maybe if he was patient, someone would answer his questions...or say why they couldn’t answer his questions...or even acknowledge his questions…

Sullenly, he wandered away and sat down on a boulder with a  _ whumpf _ and a  _ whuff _ of a pouting sigh. They’d been talking for bells and bells and  _ bells _ (at least thirty minutes) and no one was paying him any attention and he was no closer to understanding what was happening than he was five minutes after the discussions started.

“This stinks,” Drividot muttered to himself, moving the crocodile’s mask-like wooden face to make it ‘talk.’

“You said it,” said a raspy voice behind him and below him, and he promptly fell off the boulder in surprise, then scrambled around to see who it was.

The same man who’d first ordered him to fetch the adults was leaning against his boulder, sitting crosslegged and re-lighting his pipe. With the old man’s attention all on the pipe bowl, and no mother there to tug on his ears and tell him it’s rude to stare, Drividot did exactly that, as he’d never seen anyone like him before. His hair was snow white, from age, but his wrinkled skin was  _ so _ dark, almost as dark as pitch, as the rocks of the cave. He wore no shirt, his ribs could be counted, but his chest and arms were covered still in leather adornments--collars, bands--with painted and embroidered triangles on them. It was the strangest thing Drividot had ever seen.

The old man finished with his pipe, and blew out a cloud of white smoke that made Drividot cough--and the look he gave the coughing boy was the only acknowledgment he’d given him since the wry comment. He had yellow eyes, and they looked from Drividot, to the cluster of people talking, and back to him, showing no emotion (for “unimpressed” doesn’t count as emotion). “Need t’ change our pilgrimage route, and yer town’s smack in the middle of the new way,” he said at last. “Land’s changed, since last we came this way. The ground we thought we’d tunnel through, hah--” the laugh sounds less like a laugh, more like a dry cough, “--froze solid, harder and colder than Halone’s teats.”

Drividot blinked, then smiled childishly, trying to hold back giggles. If his mother heard that language...but it’s a turn of phrase he hadn’t heard before. Maybe he could ...borrow it. “You could just take the roads into the city. For pilgrimage,” he said, certain that this would help solve their problem. “There’s guards all over. They’re pretty safe.”

But instead of thanking him for his insight, the old man only sighed, shaking his head. “Dumb kid,” he muttered, very quietly and obviously not intended for Drividot to hear, “can’t even read the first bone of the--”

“I  _ can so _ !” Drividot said--quailing back for a moment, out of concern the adults heard him raising his voice to an elder, but then resuming when they didn’t seem to notice. “I can so read!” Very indignant, and not paying the right kind of attention to the kind of look the old man was giving him, he continued on. “I’m the best reader. I am! Brother Noirterel said so--”

“Are you now?” The old man’s initial surprise had given way to amusement--not laughter, just a wide, wide smile that showed off his teeth (three of which were golden, Drividot could just now see). “The  _ best _ .”

And he paused for a moment here, because that wasn’t exactly true. He wasn’t exactly the best. But he was good, and he was a better reader than Matheonien--Brother Noirterel said so himself--and in his eyes that was close enough. But he’d already said he was the best, so there was nothing for it but to press on. Drividot nodded vigorously.

“You read the Commandments, I’m sure.” The old man didn’t sound nearly as impressed as he should be, but Drividot continued nodding resolutely. “The prayers and yer alphabet, too.” Nodded again. “The Acts?” And again. “Saints and Martyrs?” He sounded sadder than any adult that had ever quizzed him on his schoolwork, but Drividot didn’t let that deter him. “Suppose you’ll read the Epistles next summer.”

“I already have,” Drividot returned, looking triumphant. See? He told you he could read, you silly old man, and he can read better than you thought, and now you look the fool, not him! Victory.

And strangely enough for an adult, while the old man didn’t realize  _ exactly _ how right and correct Drividot was, he wasn’t telling him off, either. Instead, he laughed (but not unkindly, though it was rather hoarse and rattley) and pulled out a small book from a pocket--leather-bound and probably at least as old as he was, the parchment ragged at the edges--and handed it to him. “Then read an old man a passage. Eyes aren’t what they used to be.” It was a blatant lie, as those same eyes were glittering with mischief, but Drividot pretended it wasn’t anyway, taking the book with a proud expression and opening it.

But it wasn’t words on the pages. Or--no, they  _ were _ words, they were too regular to be just scratches, but they were words unlike any he had ever seen. And thus--nothing he could read. 

He hadn’t come all this way just to look stupid  _ now _ , though. The opposite page had a drawing--a dragon and an elezen--so probably this was in the book of Martyrs. Taking a deep breath, and looking frequently from the page to the expectant old man, Drividot began to recite: “In the thousand and forty-first year of the Sixth Astral Era, the Lady Lyorelle was martyred and received Halone’s eternal reward, she now sits in the Fury’s halls and for those in life who suff--who toil--who…” He knew this story, really he did! But the old man’s laughter made it too hard to remember. Blushing with shame, he snapped the book shut and flung it in the old man’s lap, turning to rush off.

He hadn’t gotten twelve paces, though, before his arms felt suspiciously light, and he remembered the crocodile still laid by the boulder, forgotten in the excitement of speaking with the old man. And for a moment he seriously considered running back home without it--but then, if he did, the toy might get dirty, and musty, or even lost, and he would be scolded, and he didn’t want any of that. Miserably, he turned back for the boulder. 

The old man had finished laughing by the time Drividot came back, letting out breath in a sigh. “I’m sorry,” he said, though since he was still smiling it perhaps could have been  _ more _ sincere. “That was a bit mean.”

Drividot picked up the sawdust-stuffed crocodile, holding it to his chest. “I didn’t know those words,” he muttered, still bitter, but if he was caught in a lie to an adult...

“No,” the old man said cheerfully. “You knew the words. You just didn’t know which sounds. That’s all writing is--sound you can see, sound you can feel.” He held the book up as demonstration of this, thumping it against his knee.

And despite himself--despite his embarrassment and discomfort and desire to go sulk for a while--this was interesting. This was strange. Brother Noirterel did not speak of writing like this. Books and scrolls were wisdom and knowledge and goodness and high, noble things. Not  _ sound. _ Sound was..ordinary.

“So--writing’s the important thing,” he said, still trying to seem smart and exit the situation with a bit of dignity.

“Not  _ writing _ ,” the old man said, then repeated, “Sound you can see. Sound you can feel.” He tapped his ears then, and although Drividot understood some of what he meant by that--Duskwights have the keenest ears in all the realm, and it was something he knew he was supposed to take as a point of pride--but not all of it.

“But you just said--”

The old man ignored him then, digging around in his pockets for something--something wrapped in several layers of brown paper, that he unwrapped with more care than he had shown to the book. It was a bell, small and black and metal, and, from how he handled it, much, much heavier than it looked. “Sound you can see,” he repeated--he rung the bell sharply by the boulder, and a crack appeared in it. “Sound you can feel.” He rung it again, more keenly, and Drividot winced at the tone, clapping one hand to his ear. 

The old man looked up above them, at the hollow cave, and tilted the bell in his hand like it wasn’t a handbell, but a great churchbell, like the ones in the towers. “Sound that can shake great mountains down,” he whispered. With a stroke of his hand, the crack in the boulder vanished and it was whole again.

Eyes wide and mouth slightly open--his embarrassment quite forgotten--Drividot stepped back, afraid, then forward, to ask what was happening and if it was heretical. But then--

“ _ Drividot! _ ” Grandmama did not believe in letting her sixty-eight winters dampen her lungpower. “Wash up! It’s time for dinner!”

He started, and by his startlement the old man could tell just who the boy being called for was. He laughed, shooed him away, and Drividot obeyed his elders.

By the time the washing-up, the eating, and the tidying after were over, an agreement had been reached between the strangers and the village elders, and they had departed, continuing on their pilgrimage. Three days later, playing by the same boulder, he stumbled across a dusty packet: a black bell much heavier than it looked, clapper muffled by a piece of paper that had “For Drividot” written on it, and a passage written in words he never did figure out how to read.

**Author's Note:**

> wish me luck with the dissertation lol


End file.
